TDWH: Snapshots of Jazz’SAlive

Highlights of Weekenders of five, 10 and 15 years ago; TDWH stands for “This Date in Weekender History,” not “Tony Doesn’t Win Homegames.”

Sept. 17, 2004

MUSIC, EVENTS

• Sting, Annie Lennox at Verizon: Lennox said she had no plans to go on tour with anyone until … “I got a phone call, and he (Sting) invited me to join him on tour,” she told CNN. “And I said yes straight away. I wasn’t planning on going on tour with Sting. It was nothing that was on my agenda, because I’m a mother, and I take my kids to school in the morning. So you know, I wasn’t planning to do that. But when I heard that, I thought, ‘Yes, that’s a very nice idea.’ ”

Ya think? Reports from the show indicated that the Verizon was packed with folks who thought it was a nice idea to see the former (and future) Police bassist and former Eurythmics singer on the same bill. In Sting’s case, they got basically the same show he had done in January at the Majestic.

• Jazz’SAlive: The big downtown fest featured sax man Euge Groove (who turned up in 2009 as part of Guitars & Saxes) and a really big band — the Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra, led by pianist/music director Arturo O’Farrill. “The repertoire is a cross-section of what I consider to be the very best of what people call Latin jazz,” O’Farrill said to music writer Jim Beal Jr. “The starting point is in a specific era when Latin and jazz intermeshed, the ’40s and ’50s.” But… “We’re not a museum band. We don’t try to play like the bands played in the ’40s. We bring a contemporary feeling.”

(File Photo)

Jolie in “Sky Captain.” Arrrr!

MOVIES

• “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow”: Heralded throwback cross between Indiana Jones and H.G. Wells was described by movie critic Larry Ratliff as an “odd but effective mix of retro pulp fiction and state-of-the-art technology.” That technology involved filming live actors in the studio and adding backgrounds later.

The yarn about swashbuckling characters battling a mad scientist and giant robots in 1939 starred Jude Law, who was in seemingly every other movie that came out in 2004, plus Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie (looking fetching in an eyepatch).

ALSO OPENING: The baseball comedy “Mr. 3000,” starring Bernic Mac (who died in 2008); John Sayles’ political satire “Silver City”; and the documentary, “Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism,” which, shockingly, reveals a right-wing bias at Fox News.

(Express-News File Photo)

David Sanborn was one of the stars of Jazz’SAlive in 1999.

Sept. 17, 1999

MUSIC, EVENTS

• Jazz’SAlive: Some big names showed up for this incarnation of the free jazz fest, including David Sanborn and Gato Barbieri, who made no bones about who calls the shots in his band. “I have to say I’m like the star in soccer,” he told staff writer Hector Saldaña. “You have one man on the team who is the man, and he invents things and makes the goal. Basketball is the same thing. There has to be somebody to go to. In my case, the musicians know that I change things because I start, or make some sign, or stop, or start or whatever. At the same, it is very organized. They have to know the music. I might jump one way; I might jump another way. It’s what I’ve done all my life.”

• Jeff Foxworthy at Municipal Auditorium; The Southern-fried comedian was trying to ease out of his signature “you might be a redneck if…” bit, which was easier said than done. “Yes, it’s the final helping of ‘You Might Be a Redneck If.’ I’d been writing a bunch of other stuff, but I had this big pile of redneck jokes, and they were just too funny to throw away. So I thought I’d do one more book,” Foxworthy said via car phone from Atlanta after dropping his two daughters off at school. “Now I’ve got people getting mad at me everywhere. ‘You can’t quit doing these books.’ I would say it’s my ‘Free Bird.’ ”

• WWF Live!: The lineup for the Freeman Coliseum extravaganza was headlined by a bout pitting Mankind vs. Triple H and Chynna, but the list of challenge matches included The Rock battling The Big Show, who’s 7 feet tall and weighed in at 500 pounds. Maybe this is why The Rock, who had gone from hero to villain, decided to concentrate on movies.

• Flying Karamazov Brothers/San Antonio Pops: Here’s something you don’t see every day — the symphony’s pops orchestra teaming up with the comedy/juggling/theatrics troupe that calls its performances “gravity sculpture.” Apparently, the show lived up to its billing. As described by critic Diane Windeler: “In another (routine), they bounce flying clubs against plywood backdrops fitted with several drumheads. At one point during a jaw-dropping, free-form, feed-and-pass session — when a pin clattered to the floor — one asked, “What happened?” The response was, “I dropped a note.”

MOVIES

• “For Love of the Game”: Kevin Costner is an aging Detroit Tigers pitcher in the process of throwing a perfect game against the Yankees while reflecting on the turmoil in his personal life. I had completely forgotten that this movie had a censorship controversy in the form of the studio cutting shower scenes that showed Little Kevin. Costner, who must have been proud of his, uh, work, badmouthed the studio for the trim. The studio put out the word that Little Kevin had struck out with a test audience. They giggled. Never the response any man would want.

• Jazz’SAlive: A fairly stellar lineup included smooth-jazz faves the Rippingtons, Grammy-winning singer Diane Schuur and flutist Tim Weisberg, whose “Naked Eyes” CD was being crowded out of the jazz charts by a glut of sax albums, led by Kenny G’s chart-topping “Breathless.” “It’s unfortunate that so many record companies look at a guy like Kenny G and see the sales he’s having and say, ‘We need our own Kenny G.’ And all of a sudden every label has one or two sax players, and pretty soon there’s a glut of sax albums on the jazz market,” Weisberg told free-lancer Ron Young in a phone interview from his home in Los Angeles. “I’m not knocking Kenny G’s success or anybody else’s, but this kind of sameness can’t be good for jazz in the long run. I mean, an agent can’t go to a record company and try to sell them a trumpet player, say, because the record company guy knows there’s more money to be made with sax players.”

• Bobby McFerrin/S.A. Pops: The 10-time grammy winner, Mr. “Don’t Worry Be Happy” hooked up with the pops orchestra, although McFerrin also performed a solo set ” to be announced from the stage.” He said that his unprogrammed part of the concert always varies. “I usually draw on things I’ve done before, but sometimes it’s something that just pops into my head. It could be anything, just a hodgepodge.”

Asked to elaborate on the usage of his amazing four-octave range, McFerrin says he is not so unique. “I think whatever I’m doing has been done before,” he said. “Cowboys do it with yodeling; African pygmies certainly employ this kind of vocal technique. Of course, not many employ it exactly the way I do.”

MOVIES

• “Timecop”: You know it’s a slow movie week when a Jean-Claude van Damme movie gets the featured slot. The Muscles From Brussels is the title character, who chases a corrupt politician (Ron Silver) back and forth in time.

• “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert”: Tale of a group of drag queens traveling across Australia by bus is the movie from this week that has had the greatest staying power, mainly because of a cast that included Hugo Weaving (the three “Matrix” movies) and Guy Pearce (“L.A. Confidential,” “Memento”).